Simple Graphing

I read about this activity at teachpreschool.org and since our class is into counting and sorting I decided to give it a try. I used plastic bowls instead of baby food jars for the graphing materials because I didn't have enough jars in the classroom. The graph sheets I made on the computer. They are modeled after the ones used on the Teach Preschool blog. 

 Each child chose two bowls and arranged the materials from one bowl in the first column on the graphing sheet. 

Then they arranged the second set of objects on the other side of the graph. 

 After arranging the materials, the children estimated which column had more objects. 

 Then we counted each set of objects. 

 The children really enjoyed this activity and continued to work with it throughout the day. They loved choosing from the variety of math tokens and arranging them in the boxes on the graph. 

Windy Days

Last week, when we made our train conductor hats, some of the children wore them outside. The day was fairly windy and the hats quickly blew off of their little heads. Occasionally, when a child stooped to pick up a hat, it would blow away again before she could get her hands on it. Of course chasing hats across the playground is great fun so we started looking for other things that the wind would blow. We noticed that it was blowing the hair on our heads but everything else in the playground was too heavy for this wind. We decided to bring the scarves from the dress up area outside to see if they would blow, and they did!

At first we ran around the playground holding the scarves, but then we tried tying them to the fence. Every time a gust of wind blew the scarves into the air, the children screamed and cheered. 

We tried tying the scarves all the way at the top of the fence. When the wind blew, the scarves would blow up into the air and the children would jump and try to catch them. When there was no wind the scarves would lie flat and still and we wondered where the wind had gone. 

Because everyone was so interested in the wind, I brought a fan to school the next day and we made wind in the classroom. We experimented with different toys to see which ones the wind would blow. 

It did not blow the train or the play food. 

But it did blow streamers, blankets, mittens, and paper. 

Later we took the streamers outside. At first there was no wind. 

 But we waited and soon the streamers were blowing!

 This is a wonderful example of how emergent curriculum works. We had actually been planning to learn about cars this week, but when the children showed interest in the wind, we seized the moment and changed our plans.

Trains, Trains, Trains

We have been doing so many train activities over the past week but I haven't had much time to blog so I decided to put five of my favorites in one blog post. 

1. Freight Train

This activity I found at teachpreschool.org. After reading Frieght Train by Donald Crews, we set up this train center on one of our tables. 

I used painters tape to make the track and photo copied a picture of the freght train from the book and taped it to the table. I cut out construction paper rectangles for the train cars and set out a bowl of glass stones that the children put on the bottom of the cars for wheels. Most of the children followed the pattern in the picture when they lined up their train cars. 

2. Shape Trains 

For these trains, I cut lots of shapes out of different colored construction paper. I gave the children glue sticks so that they could create their own trains using the precut shapes. 

We also used painters tape to make a railroad track on the side of our castle and taped the trains onto the track.  

   

3. Cardboard Box Train Cars

 We used shoe boxes and small packing boxes with the top flaps removed for this activity. Each child cut up pieces of construction paper and glued them to their boxes. Our class loves to use scissors so the cutting portion of this activity lasted a long time. We did finally get around to gluing the paper scraps onto the boxes. 

After attaching strings to each box, we tried tying all of the boxes together but the children each wanted their own box. In the end, everyone pulled their own single car train around the room filling it with toys along the way. 

 4. Painter's Tape Train Tracks

We went through a lot of painter's tape this week mainly because of this activity. With the children's help, I put strips of tape on the rug all over the classroom and we drove the toy trains on them. Our track went under chairs, around shelves, and even up the door!

 5. Train Conductor's Hat

I found the directions for making these hats at 4crazykings.blogspot.com. We used construction paper for ours (the children chose their own colors) and we added a band with the child's name across the front. Before cutting and folding the papers, the children colored them with markers.